Related papers: Pulsar braking: magnetodipole vs. wind
Highly precise pulsar timing is very important for understanding the nature of a neutron star, and it can even be used to detect gravitational waves. Unfortunately, the accuracy of the pulsar timing is seriously affected by the spin-down…
Pulsar timing, i.e. the analysis of the arrival times of pulses from a pulsar, is a powerful tool in modern astrophysics. It allows us to measure the time delays of an electromagnetic signal caused by a number of physical processes as the…
Pulsars are potentially the most remarkable physical laboratories we will ever use. Although in many senses they are extremely clean systems there are a large number of instabilities and variabilities seen in the emission and rotation of…
Rotating neutron stars, or pulsars, are plausibly the source of power behind many astrophysical systems, such as gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants. In the past several years, 3D numerical simulations…
We address the issue of electromagnetic pulsar spindown by combining our experience from the two limiting idealized cases which have been studied in great extent in the past: that of an aligned rotator where ideal MHD conditions apply, and…
Isolated pulsars are rotating neutron stars with accurately measured angular velocities $\Omega$, and their time derivatives which show unambiguously that the pulsars are slowing down. Although the exact mechanism of the spin-down is a…
Pulsars are highly-magnetised rotating neutron stars and are well-known for the stability of their signature pulse shapes, allowing high-precision studies of their rotation. However, during the past 22 years, the radio pulse profile of the…
We study the putative emission of gravitational waves (GWs) in particular for pulsars with measured braking index. We show that the appropriate combination of both GW emission and magnetic dipole brakes can naturally explain the measured…
We firstly revisit the energy loss mechanism known as quantum vacuum friction (QVF), clarifying some of its subtleties. Then we investigate the observables that could easily differentiate QVF from the classical magnetic dipole radiation for…
We present a statistical study of pulsars and millisecond pulsars (MSPs) based on multiwavelength observations in the Galactic Field and Globular Clusters. We examine their emission properties, timing behavior, and spatial distributions,…
We have re-analyzed the stability of pulse arrival times from pulsars and white dwarfs using several analysis tools for measuring the noise characteristics of sampled time and frequency data. We show that the best terrestrial artificial…
Recent work has made it clear that the ``standard model'' of pulsar radio emission cannot be the full answer. Some fundamental assumptions about the magnetic field and plasma flow in the radio-loud region have been called into question by…
For rotation powered pulsars, the rate of change of the spin period is expected to be positive. On the other hand, for a clean binary system (where gravity is the only force acting on the pulsar) the rate of change of the orbital period is…
We study the possibility that the long term red timing-noise in pulsars originates from the evolution of the magnetic inclination angle $\chi$. The braking torque under consideration is a combination of the dipole radiation and the current…
About two years ago, Wolszczan and Frail announced the detection of a possible planetary system consisting of two Earth-mass planets around a millisecond pulsar. It was pointed out shortly thereafter that the mutual gravitational…
Pulsar braking indices offer insight into the physics that underlies pulsar spin-down. Only five braking indices have been measured via phase-coherent timing; all measured values are less than 3, the value expected from magnetic dipole…
We review current theoretical ideas on pulsar winds and their surrounding nebulae. Relativistic MHD models of the wind of the aligned rotator, and of the striped wind, together with models of magnetic dissipation are discussed. It is shown…
The period and the period derivative of a pulsar are critical magnitudes for defining the properties of the magnetospheric size and plasma dynamics. The pulsar light cylinder, the magnetic field intensity nearby it, and the curvature radius…
Variation in the angle $\alpha$ between a pulsar's rotational and magnetic axes would change the torque and spin-down rate. We show that sudden increases in $\alpha$, coincident with glitches, could be responsible for the persistent…
Observations of pulsar timing provide strong constraints on scalar-tensor theories of gravity, but these constraints are traditionally quoted as limits on the microscopic parameters (like the Brans-Dicke coupling, for example) that govern…